Archive for September, 2001

Posted on September 20, 2001 - by deCadmus

The Lonliest Island – St. Helena’s Golden Cup

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This year, St. Helena, a tiny little island in the South Atlantic, produced only 4,500 pounds of coffee. Two bags of the ‘01 crop–maybe 270 pounds–made it to the U.S. One pound of this elusive bean found its way to my house.

It’s a pretty bean: small, almost round and dense. It’s beautifully prepared: like a pearl, it nearly glows. While that’s all well and good, the question is, how does it cup? With no small amount of trepidation, I decided to find out. How does one go about roasting a rare bean? Just like any other coffee… you take notes. In this case, lots o’ notes. The only tragedy worse than messing up a batch of rare coffee like this is to not note how and why, and risk doing it twice. (more…)